


Top of the Foundation

by Leamas



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 06:03:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14948954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: In all his memories of his brother, Mikell had always been unyielding, but urgent. Now he just looked like he’d seen too much, and knew more than you did.





	Top of the Foundation

“I didn’t recognise you.”

Jack Bright stared at the man in front of him. He nodded, and swallowed. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and he had to clear his throat to speak. “I could say the same.”

“I’ve only put on a few years,” Mikell said. “That’s not the same as…”

“What do you know?” Jack asked, shoulders back, hands on his hips. He may as well be in a child’s body, he looked so like a kid playing at being in charge.

“Not a lot, brother.”

“What did they tell you?” Jack asked, finally.

“Not a lot, but I suspect a bit more than they told you,” Mikell said. “Come. Walk with me. My office isn’t far—if we leave now we can reach it before dawn.”

Jack did as he was told. He’d already been through security, studied and checked for anything he might have on him that he shouldn’t have, even if he didn’t know that. What little he brought with him had been taken, presumably to meet a similar fate. In a rare, exceptional circumstance, the amulet had been confiscated from him and was currently being held somewhere back in Site-19; presumably, they’d checked him for that, too. Now that he was inside, he saw that he was being monitored by armed security in every room, to say nothing of Mikell’s bodyguards.

“This way,” Mikell said. Through a door they went. “I heard about 076. They notified me immediately—not that there was much that I could do, but I suppose as a courtesy. Better I find out like that, then as part of my job.”

“And how long was it before they corrected that mistake?”

“Oh, they informed me of that with just as much urgency, as soon as they knew,” Mikell said. “For a month and a half, I thought you were dead. Then I learned otherwise. What was it like, losing all that time?”

There was a cool air to Mikell now. Jack had either never noticed it before, or this was a new development. In all his memories of his brother, Mikell had always been unyielding, but urgent. Now he just looked like he’d seen too much, and knew more than you did.

“I have the rest of eternity to make up for it,” Jack said. “So it really doesn’t matter.”

“That it doesn’t,” Mikell said. They passed the elevator, climbed a flight of stairs. Although Mikell was now older than Jack remembered, with lines around his eyes and hands and hair that was beginning to turn grey, he didn’t seem at all weaker for it. Where he had time to stay in shape now that he was an O5 was beyond Jack—he was only personnel director and he was pretty sure that he didn’t even get the time it took to fart in peace.

Mikell’s office was spacious, the unholy child of a New York based psychoanalyst’s office, with its dark oak-wood desk and leather furniture, and the luxury suite of some resort in Florida. One wall was lined with bookshelves; another, screens set behind a thick layer of glass that did a great job pretending to be a window. The room looked so completely unlike anything how he remembered Mikell living that Jack could only assume that someone designed it for him, with or without his input; either way, it suited him.

“If this is your office, then how does your apartment look?”

“I’ll give you a tour later,” Mikell said. “Come on—sit down. Let me get you a drink. We have a lot to go over, don’t we?”

“More than you know.”

Mikell laughed. “I strongly doubt that. But don’t worry about that now. We’ll go over that once the documents you brought were screened for any memetic hazards. There’s no point before then. And besides, I do believe that we have a lot to go over—off the record.”

Jack didn’t know who Mikell thought he was kidding. His security wasn’t in the room with him, but they were listening; there were cameras everywhere. There was no way in hell that everything that happened in here wasn’t being recorded. If Jack had ever complained about the lack of privacy that accompanied his position as personnel director, researcher, and SCP, it was only because he wasn’t considering what it might be like for an O5, with that same lack of privacy but a rigorous examination of everything that was turned up.

But maybe it was just comparative. Maybe once there came a point where your reactions were being monitored via sensors listening to your heartbeats, the precious little time you had with only your brother in the room with you counted as personal, or intimate.

Mikell called for some drinks, then turned the screens over to a display of the night sky, with its perfect view of the galaxy as seen from a Nebraska field.

He handed Jack a shot of whiskey and they did a toast.

“I can’t believe this,” Jack said. “It’s only been forty-five minutes since I learned you were still alive, and now here we are, putting these away.”

“Just like old times,” Mikell said.

“Except that I didn’t used to drink.”

It didn’t take long for conversation to return to the past, although not so far as to touch the part of their past that they’d shared together. Mikell knew what had happened to Jack, of course. Nothing was classified. He probably knew more about Jack’s ascent than Jack did, come to think of it, but he made Jack go over it all again, anyway, starting with his work with 076 through the troubling years that followed, when Jack had to prove his loyalty all over again as though being murdered once suddenly made him incompetent and untrustworthy. Jack skimmed past the few years that he’d spent doing various horrific things, for science, and then picked up when his clearance had finally been returned to him.

“I guess throwing myself into the metaphorical woodchipper a few time proves that I’m loyal,” Jack said with a laugh.

“That’ll do it,” Mikell said—did he seem proud?

“What did you have to do to get this promotion?” Jack asked.

“I was good at my job, and willing to do what was necessary,” Mikell said, “at any cost. It also helps that I have a spine. You don’t make it this far by blindly following orders.”

“No,” Jack agreed.

“How’s TJ?” Mikell asked.

“Fine,” Jack said, quickly. He finished his drink, held out his glass while he waited for another, that Mikell readily provided.

“You’re looking after him?”

“As best I can,” Jack said. “I’m busy, Mikell.”

“Not too busy for family.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Jack’s lip. “I do what I can, but I get the impression that he doesn’t want to see me. He knows more than he’s letting on.”

“That’s you,” Mikell said. “Projecting. He doesn’t know anything—sure as hell doesn’t know what was done to him. It’s kinder that way, don’t you think?”

“How do you know?”

“Class A’s,” Mikell said. “Don’t look so shocked.”

“I’m not,” Jack said. He knew about the frequency of amnestic use—knew more about it than most personnel, who liked to think they’d know if it happened to them.

It was just different when it was family.

“I have a question for you,” Jack said. “It’s about Claire.”

“I know as much as you do,” Mikell said. “Plus a few things that you’re not authorised to know.”

“But I’m not going to remember this conversation anyway, am I?”

Mikell smiled. “That depends entirely on you.”

“What can you tell me?” Jack asked. “She’s my sister, too.”

“David’s still with her,” Mikell said. “Dear god! The Serpent’s Hand exists solely to be a thorn in my side, let me tell you that. It’s the worst part of having a younger sister and a son—he causes me no shortage of headaches, even now. A bit silly to think that he’d outgrow that, don’t you think?”

No bitterness in his voice, no malice. Jack supposed he’d had plenty of time to come to terms with that.

“And that’s your metaphorical woodchipper,” Jack said.

“For now,” Mikell trailed off.

Things had changed in the years after David went missing. Mikell had changed. Losing a child wasn’t any easier just because that child wasn’t dead. In a way, it felt fitting that Mikell vanished not long after that. MIA, they’d told Jack—and a decade later, he was back. With that in mind, Jack supposed he didn’t have a right to judge him for thinking that things might still be different with David.

Except that David was not immortal, unlike them.

“Speaking of woodchippers,” Mikell said, and nodded towards Jack.

“What?”

“Is that new?” Mikell asked. “Last I heard you were in a woman’s body. D-19135, right?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Jack said. “I can’t remember every number. I’d rather not, when I can help it—you _keep track?_ ”

“Of course I keep track. You’re my brother, and I love you. What happened to the last one we gave you?”

“It wasn’t a woodchipper,” Jack laughed. “That was years ago.”

“Time flies.” Mikell’s eyes moved over Jack, and he felt himself being watched. Something that he’d come to recognise, not something he’d ever grown used to.

“Shame,” Mikell said. “The old one suited you.”

“She would have been your type.”

Mikell shrugged one shoulder. So yes, then. Jack finished his drink. Just when he’d thought that he’d faced every awkward situation connected with the amulet, his older brother came back from the dead, ready to gift him with a new one. Fantastic.

“The whole body thing,” Mikell said. “How does it work?”

“You’ve read the report.”

“I’ve seen more of it than you have,” Mikell said. “Had a hand in specifying that the amulet was the anomalous artefact, not the soul trapped inside it. You’re just the consequence. It could be any of us in there.”

“But it isn’t anyone. It’s me.”

Mikell spoke in a tone as cool as death, a seriousness that felt stiflingly formal to listen to. “Of course it’s you, Jack. It’s something like destiny that we’ve all found our way to immortality.”

“Or bad luck,” he said, recalling David.

“You must have known that I was still alive,” Mikell said. “You didn’t think I just _died_ , did you?”

_Yes_ , Jack thought, _because that’s what happens to people_. Except that Jack new that other things happened, too—agents died but they also went deep undercover. They also met fates worse than death; they were captured, tortured, turned. They had missions to do and they faked their deaths and then they came back, and all of those things were possible.

“I speculated,” he said, which wasn’t true at all—he’d hoped. Two remarkably different things.

“You’re smart. I knew you’d figure it out. But I thought it was time I showed my face.”

Jack recognised the look on Mikell’s face as whatever he wanted it to be. The face of an undercover agent, at least the ones from back when the Foundation was young, when they were more reckless and there was less red tape. It didn’t look like Mikell had yet outgrown that; he’d be surprised if Mikell ever did.

Jack sat up straighter. Raised his glass, empty. Mikell fixed that. “But tonight we’re drinking. And reminiscing. Evidently.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Mikell said. “We have a lot to cover. The view I have up here won’t have been nearly as fulfilling as your view on the ground.”


End file.
